RHEINBERGER Organ Concertos: No. 1 in F; No. 2 in g. 3 Pieces for Cello and Organ • Stefan Johannes Bleicher (org); Douglas Boyd, cond; Musikkollegium Winterthur; Cäcilia Chmel (vc) • MDG 1643 (SACD: 57:58)


Josef Rheinberger (1839–1901) is frequently named alongside Max Bruch, Karl Goldmark, Robert Fuchs, and Carl Reinecke when mention is made of late 19th- to early 20th-century German Romantic composers who cultivated an essentially conservative style influenced by the Mendelssohn-Schumann-Brahms-Joachim axis. Budding composers from abroad, including America, flocked to Germany to study under these men and to have bestowed upon them the mantle of a proper German pedigree. In Leipzig, Reinecke could claim Grieg, Sinding, Svendsen, Janá?ek, and Weingartner among his students; while in Munich, Rheinberger could name Humperdinck, Parker, Chadwick, Wolf-Ferrari, Thuille, and Furtwängler among those he instructed.


Rheinberger’s instrument was the organ, a fact that’s hard to ignore based on his vast output in which the organ plays a dominant role. Yet, in his entire voluminous catalog—the solo organ pieces alone occupy 12 CDs—the two concertos on this disc are the only concerted works I’m aware of that he wrote for organ and orchestra. The mind leaps immediately to the similar compositions by Rheinberger’s French contemporaries Widor and Guilmant, but the reality is that Rheinberger’s concertos are in a more classical mold and of a thematic content somewhat similar to the chorale-like melodic and harmonic manner of Saint-Saëns. Oddly, as well, there are not a few passages that seem to anticipate the sort of ceremonial hubbub and pageantry one hears in Elgar’s soon-to-be pomp and circumstance mode. Rheinberger’s concertos, however, predate the earliest of Elgar’s coronation marches by 17 and seven years, respectively.


The Concerto No. 1, dated 1884, two years before Saint-Saëns’s brilliant “Organ” Symphony, is modestly orchestrated for three horns (or two horns and bassoon) and strings, with the organ filling in for the absent winds. Scoring in the Concerto No. 2 of 10 years later isn’t much augmented, but to the earlier ensemble Rheinberger adds two trumpets and timpani, so that the organ must still furnish the sonorities that would ordinarily be supplied by flutes, oboes, and clarinets. If the Second Concerto finds its voice somewhere between Saint-Saëns and Elgar, the First Concerto reaches a bit further back, perhaps to Mendelssohn and Schumann.


These are not hard works to like. They’re tuneful, spirited, and engaging enough that one doesn’t miss the fuller symphonic approach that Saint-Saëns took to the orchestra or the more variegated splashes of color Widor and Guilmant drew from their Cavaillé-Coll and French organs.


There are two or three more recordings of these works available than I find reviewed in the Fanfare Archive. In 23:6, John Bauman covered a Classico release featuring organist Ulrik Spang-Hansen with the Chamber Philharmonic of Bohemia led by Douglas Bostock; while in 28:5, James Reel readdressed a Capriccio recording that had originally been reviewed in 16:2 and was recycled in SACD format with the rear channels presumably artificially processed. That disc featured organist Andreas Juffinger with Harmut Haenchen conducting the Berlin RSO. Not reviewed, as far as I can tell, are recordings by Ulrich Meldau with Daniel Schweizer presiding over the Zurich Symphony Orchestra on the Motette label, and a more recent Naxos version by organist Paul Skevington with Timothy Rowe leading the Amadeus Chamber Ensemble. Of these several editions, the only one I have for comparison purposes is the Juffinger in its “enhanced” SACD incarnation.


The Capriccio booklet has nothing to say about the organ, though the recording was made in Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche, so I assume the instrument to be of German, Swiss, or Dutch pedigree, but for the concertos the new MDG recording is to be preferred. Newly recorded in February 2010, the disc is in true surround format. Full-page specifications are given on Winterthur’s historic Stadrkirche organ built by E. F. Walcker in 1887–88 and restored in 1980–84 by the Swiss firm currently doing business as Kuhn Organ Builders, Ltd. And MDG’s Bleiche and Boyd are considerably more animated than Capriccio’s Juffinger and Haenchen in every movement of both concertos, delivering performances that are crisply articulated and in which the organ and orchestra are beautifully integrated.


MDG’s bonus is three pieces— Abendlied, Pastorale, and Elegie —Rheinberger transcribed for cello and organ from a set of six pieces he’d originally written for violin and organ at the dual requests of church organist Johann Georg Herzog and the composer’s publisher, August Robert Froberg. Adagio meditation-type pieces for a solo string instrument accompanied by organ were rarities, if indeed they existed at all at the time. Rheinberger’s contributions are exactly what you would expect—the musical equivalent of votive candles flickering in the transepts. Cellist Cäcilia Chmel plays prayerfully enough, but the angels remain frozen in their friezes, unmoved by Rheinberger’s entreaties.


Definitely recommended for enjoyable, if not great, music, fine performances, and superb recording. I will not, however, be throwing away my Juffinger and Haenchen on Capriccio for the simple reason that it includes Rheinberger’s Suite for Violin and Organ, op. 166, a lovely neobaroquish affair that echoes with distant strains of Bach, Handel, and Corelli, and is a more substantial and preferable alternative to the three cello pieces on the current disc.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

It was the great Linus himself who taught Orpheus, the ancient singer par excellence, how to perform music before his jealous father Apollo killed him. André Jolivet’s “Chant de Linos,” a highly expressive song of lament composed as a tonally virtuosic competition piece, impressively concludes this entertaining SACD portrait bringing together the flute soloist Helen Dabringhaus and her piano partner Sebastian Berakdar. Schubert’s “Trockene Blumen” and Bartók’s “Suite paysanne hongroise” form other highlights, both feared and loved, of the flute literature: here they encounter the moderated modernism of Hosokawa’s magical tones and – in its recording premiere – Carl Frühling’s romantic “Fantasie,” which is extant only in this piano version. A richly varied program distinguished by finesse and the very best!

Things aren’t quite as they seem. Each of these three works was originally written for oboe, horn and piano but has been arranged for trumpet, trombone and piano. It’s not immediately clear to me by whom these arrangements were made, or maybe it was a collaborative effort, but this is in any case such an unusual combination that it might be thought a shame to dilute it in this way. Still, what is denied here to the oboe and horn is gifted to the two brass instruments that share a comparable compass.

Carl Reinecke’s Trio was composed in 1886. He hits on a delightful theme for the opening Allegro moderato, one so delightful in fact that he keeps repeating it again and again. This robust, rather old school writing is not without drama – note the vigorous trumpet-led accelerandi – and has genial charm in the Scherzo, too. The romantic warmth of the cavatina-like Adagio is properly conveyed by Michael Massong’s trombone, in particular – an instrument that lends plangent warmth to the proceedings – and there are hints of wit in the light and spirited Rondo finale.

Written on the same conventionally-structured four movement lines, Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s Trio was dedicated to an old friend, Gustav Hinke, oboist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. Though it also reveals a comparable technical assurance to Reinecke’s work, it sports rather more in the way of bucolic humour. Thematically things are democratically parcelled out and in the hunting brio of the Scherzo, suitably stabbing accents add some vivid drama to the proceedings. The two brass players convince here – they’re in their metier, in fact – but they are also alert to the balladic potential of the slow movement whether singly or in unison. Friederich Höricke provides immaculate support here to Massong and trumpeter Andre Schoch, as indeed he does in the fanfare-dotted exuberance of the finale, with its somewhat Brahmsian close. Herzogenberg’s wife, Elizabeth, incidentally, was the dedicatee of Brahms’s Op.78 Rhapsodies.

Very much the odd man out, compositionally, is York Bowen. His late-Romantic and, pianistically, frankly Rachmaninovian elements are on show in this compact Ballade, Op.133. It was published in 1956 though assumed to have been written some years before, possibly in 1949. Bowen ensure that phrases overlap, which generates a real sense of urgency and the music flows through textures, moods, and tempi towards a quiet, reflective close. This is a fine performance, though doubtless Bowen enthusiasts would rather hear the real deal.

If you want the original instrumentation of the two German works turn to the luxury casting of Tuckwell, Goritzki and Requejo on Claves CD-50 0803.

Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

For British listeners, the name of Reinecke is likely to evoke Stanford’s recollection - after an uninspiring period of study with him - that “of all the dry musicians I have ever known, he was the most desiccated”. Scandinavians will remember that Grieg thought no better of the man and that for Svendsen, “not only is he envious and bloodless … he is also in the highest degree villainous”. Yet many musicians sought him out during his long reign at the Leipzig Gewandhaus (1860-1895), including Sullivan, Bruch, Delius and the three just mentioned, while Elgar travelled to Leipzig in 1882 to hear him conduct.
 
If this all suggests a plodding academic, the “Undine” Sonata for flute and piano, the one work by Reinecke that remains at least on the fringe of the repertoire, is neither academic nor lacking in fantasy. A disc containing the First Symphony, the Violin Concerto and some smaller pieces suggested to me that further examination of Reinecke would be never less than pleasant, if hardly thrilling. Maybe thrilling would be too strong a word for these cello sonatas too, but they do suggest he was more inspired in chamber music than in larger orchestral pieces.
 
In some ways the first sonata is the most attractive of all. Its ballad-like opening theme immediately catches the attention and the second theme is not only well contrasted, it is introduced in a very remote tonality indeed. What is striking about this movement is the mastery with which it combines free-flowing, rhapsodic feeling with tight formal control. Though Reinecke is said to have looked back to Mendelssohn and Schumann for his models, and certainly rejected Liszt and Wagner, his music combines romantic spirit with an intuitive sense of form. Here, at least, he was able to make his own personal fusion of classical ideals and romantic freedom. The second movement also contains a number of quite contrasting ideas and the finale has much surging passion.
 
The claims of the second sonata are not to be underestimated, either. After a short but brooding introduction the first movement leads off with a pithy, expressive idea that revolved in my head for some days afterwards. Again, Reinecke’s formal control is tight even while the effect is of free rhapsody. The themes tend not to appear and reappear in the expected places and tonalities, and are inclined to undergo transformations just where an exact recapitulation might seem in sight. The second movement is marked “Quasi fantasia” and has much soaring romantic melody. The finale starts with a catchy tune but is inclined to chase its own tail a bit too much for its own good. This, admittedly, is a common failing among 19^th century finales when not written by Brahms.
 
Altogether, it may be said that, if Reinecke did not revolutionize sonata forms, he nevertheless evolved an intuitively inventive way of reinterpreting received formal wisdom. The interesting thing is that exactly the same thing could be said about his grudging pupil Stanford’s chamber music, even down to a tendency to write finales that chase their own tail. One is bound to wonder if Reinecke’s music did not have a greater influence on Stanford than he later cared to admit, having been so disappointed by the man himself. Also common to both composers is a complete equality between the two partners, with plenty of challenging material for both players and a continual melodic interplay that must make Reinecke’s chamber music rewarding to perform. Ultimately, I suppose this music inhabits smiling valleys and pleasant domestic surroundings rather than soar above the mountain peaks, but we can surely find a place for music that does this so attractively.
 
The third sonata arouses more ambivalent reactions. Dedicated “to the shade of Brahms”, who had just died, its formal mastery will not be questioned. Furthermore, while in one sense it occupies harmonic ground solidly rooted in Schumann, its restless modulations look ahead to the world of Reger. It is a bitter, even vehement work by a composer whose art was by then left high and dry by musical progress. The only problem is that Reinecke’s easy flow of melodic inspiration seems to have dried up. The themes are clear-cut and functional, but neither the composer’s masterly development of them, nor these performers’ imagination and conviction, can hide the fact that the cupboard is a little bare. Only the second theme of the finale recalls the warmth of earlier years. Nevertheless, as often with late works by composers clinging to the style of their youth in the teeth of what they perceive as ugly modernism, the sense of isolation and disillusionment can be moving in themselves. Here, too, the case of Stanford is an obvious parallel.
 
Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, just in case you’ve been wondering, is the great baritone’s son. It would seem that interventionism, as an interpretative creed, runs in the family. But, like his father at his best, MF-D knows how to intervene in a way that brings the music to life, and he extracts the maximum range of expression from these scores. The Canadian pianist Connie Shih has an easy technical command and a well-rounded tone in the heavier moments. She and the cellist seem in full agreement over how to play this music. They leave me wondering why the first two sonatas, at least, never made it into the not very large repertoire of romantic cello sonatas.
 
Cellists reading these words may be wondering where they can get the scores. They will be delighted to find that the IMSLP-Petrucci Library, a great Internet resource, apparently offers all three for free download. They will be a bit less delighted when they find that the file of no.1 is missing pages 4-15, jumping from the first page of the first movement to the last page of the second, so you get only the finale complete. Also, there’s not a cello part, instead there’s an alternative violin part. The second sonata is complete but the piano part of no.3 lacks the last page, or maybe the last two. In compensation you get pages 10 and 11 twice. I used to think that people who do things for love not money do them properly, but on this showing even some who work for love are as slap-happy as any half-hearted employee anxious for the next coffee break. Granted, one shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, but we may reasonably check that it has all four legs.
 
None of this little grumble, obviously, affects the value of this finely recorded and excellently annotated disc of three cello sonatas well worth investigating. The name of Reinecke is beginning to come alive for me.
 
-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International

John Adam Reincken was a celebrity. When the genial Johann Sebastian Bach was a sixteen-year-old secondary school pupil, he made his way on foot from Lüneburg to Hamburg to experience in person this undisputed master of improvisational artistry. What the young man heard must have made a profound impression on him. In his toccatas Bach closely follows his great model and even quotes motivic material from Reincken's works. Sonja Kemnitzer's rendering of harpsichord compositions by Reincken is a revelatory listening experience immediately conveying a lot of this fascination.

“Great – I too will write two such things!” This was Max Reger’s comment on a performance including Brahms’s clarinet sonatas, and only a few weeks later he kept his word, delivering his first two clarinet sonatas in his op. 49. The Dresden State Orchestra’s young solo clarinetist Robert Oberaigner and the ARD prizewinner Michael Schöch have now joined forces to present not only this double stroke of genius but also Reger’s Sonata op. 107. Two encores supplying a surprisingly different tone, “Tarantella” and “Albumblatt,” round off the Weiden master’s clarinet oeuvre.

The two soloists form a chamber dream duo of a kind that is only rarely found. Tone colors and expressive gestures are exchanged and further developed, so that the result is pure joy: competition occurs in the field of dynamic expression, and the quest for the unknown becomes a common cause.

Luxurious 2+2+2 sound, a Super Audio CD of the highest recording quality, and everything that even the most highly discriminating music fans expect.

Classical Music

REGER Clarinet Quintet. String Sextet • Ens Villa Musica; Ulf Rodenhäuser (cl) • MDG 304 1557 (72:04)

"This is something of an unexpected release. In the 1990s, MDG issued five numbered volumes of Reger’s chamber music, including the complete string quartets, all with ensembles centered on the Mannheim String Quartet. Apparently, however, that series has gone as far as it will go, since its last release is dated 1998. In the meantime, MDG has issued another disc of Reger’s two piano trios, and now this disc, neither with a volume number.

The Ensemble Villa Musica, a flexibly constituted group of Germany’s top instrumentalists, has also long been active with MDG, recording everything from Mozart to Hindemith. Perhaps the present release indicates that they are assuming the continuation of the Reger project; I believe this is their first recording of his music.

Clarinetist Rodenhäuser, the group’s leader, has chosen a fascinating pairing for this disc. The Clarinet Quintet, Reger’s last completed work (1915), is also probably his best-known chamber composition; by contrast, the String Sextet, also a late work (1910), is rarely encountered. Both combinations offer a wealth of opportunities for the sort of contrapuntal density that is so familiar in Reger’s music; the Quintet, however, favors instead a harmonic richness that, with the addition of the clarinet, gives the music an unprecedented warmth. The Sextet is “in F Major,” but the harmonic language of most of its first movement is so chromatic that this tonality really becomes clear only in retrospect. The opening is in Reger’s familiar spiky character, but this soon gives way to a great variety of textures: striking chorale-like passages, extensive octave doublings, and lyric episodes of the type that had begun creeping into Reger’s musical language more and more, beginning around the turn of the century. There is considerable lyricism, even delicacy, both in the first movement’s second group and in the trio of the Scherzo. MDG has the field pretty much to itself with the Sextet; while it has been recorded before—I have a Jecklin LP done by a group of Swiss musicians who sound like they have no idea what to make of the piece—this seems currently to be the only recording in print. The Villa Musica performance is confident and secure, and makes a good case for the piece as a representative of Reger’s evolving later style...MDG’s recording is exemplary as always: well detailed, but with plenty of space around the instruments. The notes, in three languages, cover all the important bases."

FANFARE: Richard A. Kaplan

REGER / 7 CHORALE FANTASIAS - Balazs Szabo

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

DEBUSSY Children’s Corner (arr. Raaf Hekkema). 6 Épigraphes antiques (arr. Eduard Wesly). COUPERIN/RAVEL (arr. Alvan Wesly) Forlane. RAVEL (arr. Raaf Hekkema) Le tombeau de Couperin • Calefax Reed Qnt • MDG 619 0658 (58:42)


It takes a considerable amount of moxie to re-arrange Ravel’s masterfully scored Le tombeau de Couperin. The Netherlands-based Calefax Reed Quintet?Eduard Wesly, oboe and oboe d’amore; Ivar Berix, clarinet; Raaf Hekkema, saxophone; Jelte Althuis, bass clarinet; Alban Wesly, bassoon?has that characteristic in droves and indeed gets away with it. This ensemble differs from the traditional wind quintet by its substitution of the saxophone for the horn and the use of both clarinet and bass clarinet. The resulting homogeneity of sound and timbral color is both striking and illuminating. As a further claim of legitimacy for their version of Ravel’s Tombeau , they include the fugue and toccata movements from the piano original which Ravel chose not to score, and, as a bonus track, Ravel’s Forlane , which was an early study for the finished Le tombeau de Couperin.


The two Debussy works are less liable to suffer critical brickbats for being mere transcriptions of perfectly stunning originals. In point of fact, Debussy never scored Children’s Corner . That was done by André Caplet, one of Debussy’s protégés, and Six Épigraphes antiques is Debussy’s own 1914 rescoring for piano four hands of his Chansons de Bilitis originally composed in 1900 for reciter, flute, harps, and celeste (the celeste part has been lost, or it never existed because Debussy improvised it on the spot). It is amazing how little orchestration Debussy, a proven master of that art as evidenced in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Nocturnes, La Mer, Images pour Orchestre , and Jeux, actually did. La boite à joujoux was scored by Caplet; Raposodie pour orchestre et saxophone solo by Jean Roger Ducasse; Petite Suite by Henri Büsser; and Khamma by Charles Koechlin—and so it goes.


As far as I’m concerned, these two Debussy pieces are up for grabs, and the Calefax Reed Quintet, indeed, grabs them well.


As to this ensemble’s performances, my library contains literally dozens of recordings of all the works on this release, either in their original guises or later scorings. Blow by blow citations of how this or that passage has been handled by this or that performer or group is beside the point and could inflate this review to five times over its current length. Suffice it to say that the Calefax Reed Quintet represents the highest international level of wind-playing, that they approach these scores with an infectious combination of youthful impetuousness and longing, naiveté and sophistication, and that they are in league with the finest practitioners of French repertoire past and present. Add to this that the sound is so clean, vivid, and well balanced that one can almost taste the timbres, and—well . . .


FANFARE: William Zagorski

Ravel was fastidious composer, slow, deliberate and painstaking about detail. Consequently his output is relatively small yet exceedingly high in craftsmanship and musical quality. It may surprise people to know that Ravel’s total output for solo piano spans just over 130 minutes and the MDG label have accommodated the complete works on this double CD set played by the outstanding soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

Ravel’s earliest piano works are dominated by impressionism and it is generally acknowledged that in 1901 Ravel composed the first ever impressionist work for piano with Jeux d’eaux (Fountains). The work brought the composer considerable success and on this release piano soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet makes a fine job of portraying Ravel’s images of the music and sounds of fountains, waterfalls and streams. The extended arpeggios pitted against dreamy harmonies are most convincing.

In 1899 Ravel composed his celebrated Pavane pour une infante défunte, which was conceived as a delicate and tender portrait of old Spain with a sensuous Debussian flow imposed on an old dance form. The Pavane remains Ravel’s most popular composition especially in his 1910 orchestration. The sheer sound that Bavouzet draws from his Steinway D piano manufactured in 1901 is ravishing and a real highlight.

Composed in 1905, for a competition conducted by a music journal, the three movement Sonatine is acknowledged as one of Ravel’s finest piano compositions. Bavouzet is particularly impressive in the surging passion of the first movement Modéré and the nervous exuberance of the Animé finale.

At nearly thirty minutes in duration Miroirs from 1905 is Ravel’s largest piano work and also arguably his most daring as he entered a new phase of development. Bavouzet skilfully moves across to this freer and more varied style with more extended developments. Ravel uses five pieces which are designed to reflect their subjects, inspired by external images as mirrored in sound. For example in the second piece Oiseaux tristes the music is symbolic never attempting to imitate bird song. Soloist Bavouzet gives a most sensitive portrait of the extensive palette of colours in Ravel’s musical description of the changing sea in Une barque sur l’océan. Bavouzet’s delicate blend of irony and tone painting is impressive and compelling in the famous Alborada del gracioso.

Originally intended as a musical tribute to the harpsichord music of François Couperin-le-Grand the celebrated Le Tombeau de Couperin was Ravel’s final work for solo piano. Composed between 1914 to 1917 Ravel was to dedicate this set of six pieces in honour of friends that had died in the Great War. Ravel was further affected by the death of his mother at this time yet there is no trace of pity or melancholy under the surface of the music. Essentially a neo-classical work Bavouzet in successful is performing the work with all the necessary seventeenth century economy and transparency and really communicates a sense of tranquillity in the spirit of a by-gone age.

In 1908 Ravel was inspired to compose three descriptive pieces for piano by the poems of Aloysius Bertrand under the collective title of Gaspard de la Nuit. In this fantasy world of gnomes, elves and ghosts the first piece of the trilogy Ondine reproduces the sound of water. Le Gibet is a musical portrait of the gallows and the final piece Scarbo is an ironic scherzo representing a will-o-the-wisp. Bavouzet makes light work of the technical demands and provides a spontaneous, almost improvisatory feel of harrowing immediacy.

Franz Schubert’s piano waltzes were the inspiration behind Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales composed in 1911. The cycle consists of seven pieces which follow each other directly, with an additional epilogue. With bold harmonies Bavouzet impressively conveys the rhythms with the pulse and lilt of the Viennese waltzes.

Bavouzet is clearly in love with this music. He provides the perfect atmosphere and is consistently impressive in the several shorter works on this release; in particular the Sérénade grotesque and the Menuet antique.

There are several illustrious alternative versions in the catalogue of the complete piano works of Ravel which are all highly recommendable. Notably the sets from heavyweight artistes such as: Pascal Roge on Double Decca 440 836 2; Louis Lortie on Chandos CHAN 7004/7; Jean-Yves Thibaudet on Decca 433 515-2; Jean-Philippe Collard on EMI CES5 72376-2 and Angela Hewitt’s recent survey on Hyperion CDA 67341/2. I have no hesitation in stating that Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s masterly interpretations on MDG can stand equally alongside the very best of these distinguished versions. Bavouzet plays with such remarkable authority, expressive strength and unadulterated brilliance. The soloist’s phrasing seems to transcend beyond Ravel’s markings on the page and allows the musical line to breathe in a natural, almost conversational way.

Assisted by the splendid sound quality provided by MDG’s natural acoustics and the comprehensive booklet notes, this recording challenges the best around. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is one of France’s best kept secrets. In fact Bavouzet’s playing is restricted to a most narrow range; wonderful to superb.

-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

Classical Music